We've been telling you for months on The BradCast that it was likely to be a very bumpy road to Election Day ... and likely beyond it, depending on how things go. We are now on that road. Lots of bumps, as predicted, but still plenty of hope to help us all stay positive in the closing days. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our occasionally bumpy, occasionally hopeful coverage on today's program...

• We open with some encouraging listener mail from a family of democracy champions, and their recommendation to help you stay engaged and hopeful and helpful above and beyond voting, by checking out the very cool Markers for Democracy, "Saving our democracy, one postcard at a time."

• A U.S. Postal Service mailbox with a number of mailed absentee ballots in it, was set ablaze overnight at a post office in Phoenix, Arizona. Authorities are investigating the likely case of arson in the battleground state, and a USPS spokesperson suggests that, if you use a mailbox for your absentee ballot, try to drop it in "before the last collection time each day." Good advice. Better advice: Deliver that ballot in person to a precinct, voting center or town/county election headquarters, as allowed in your jurisdiction.

• Also in Phoenix, Arizona today, details on charges filed against a 60-year old man suspected of shooting at the windows of a Democratic National Committee field office for Kamala Harris in Tempe, three times times over the past several weeks. Law enforcement officials say the man, now in custody, was found to have more than 120 guns and 250,000 rounds of ammo at his home, and a machine gun in the car he was driving. They say he appeared to be planning "a mass casualty event". No one was injured in the shootings, but the Harris field office was eventually closed. He has been charged with seven counts related to terrorism. He is also accused of hanging hand-made political signs critical of Harris and Democrats, lined with razor blades and a substance labeled as "biohazard" in a Democratic-leaning Phoenix suburb.

• Given the disturbing allegations this week by Donald Trump's longest-serving White House Chief of Staff, retired 4-star U.S. Marine General John Kelly, describing his former boss as a "fascist", a fan of Hitler, and an opponent of the Constitution, rule of law and military vets injured or killed in the line of duty, Kamala Harris is leaning on a strong anti-fascism message in her closing argument, just over a week out from Election Day. We share both her initial response to Kelly's remarks yesterday in D.C., as well as those from a CNN town hall last night where she made no bones about her answer when asked if she believed the disgraced former President was, indeed, a fascist.

• In case you are still unclear about what Donald Trump will do if he is elected again and how he will continue to undermine the rule of law, he said on a radio show this morning that he plans to "fire" Special Counsel Jack Smith "within two seconds" after taking office. "He'll be one of the first things addressed." Never mind that Trump wouldn't actually have the legal authority to do so. Smith, of course, has filed felony charges against Trump in D.C. for his many failed attempts to steal the 2020 election, and in Florida for having stolen thousands of pages of highly classified national security documents upon leaving the White House and refusing to return them to the federal government.

• And, in case you're confused about who Donald Trump is referring to when he vows "retribution" against "the enemies within", it is you. E&E News has a new report out today detailing how Trump, when he was last allowed to be President, withheld FEMA aid following natural disasters in several states --- Washington, California, Georgia, Utah and Maryland --- due to political disagreements he had with their Governors following his election loss in November of 2020.

• Desi Doyen joins us today for our latest Green News Report, tracking record heat, drought and wildfires in the U.S. Northeast; the U.S. Senate races which could determine who wins the majority in the upper chamber this year, and how that is likely to affect action on our climate crisis; and the Biden Administration's race to get climate and infrastructure funding out the door before next year's changing of the guard.

• Finally, since it has been --- and will continue to be --- a bumpy ride between now and Election Day (and, likely beyond), we close today with some hopeful words of encouragement from our current, unflagging Vice President and, perhaps, next President of United States...

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It has been the most important week in the New York criminal trial of Donald J. Trump, as the last witness for the prosecution, Trump's former attorney and fixer Michael Cohen took the stand. The court is off today, so we have time on today's BradCast to catch our breath for yet another Trump Trial "ketchup" show for you. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

BUT FIRST, we've got a few noteworthy results from Tuesday's primary elections in Nebraska, Maryland and West Virginia, where, once again --- other than in WV --- Joe Biden outperformed Donald Trump among their respective party voters. Yes, the zombie campaign of Nikki Haley keeps on going. The former South Carolina Governor, who dropped out of the race months ago at this point, won 20% of the GOP vote in MD, while she and one other GOP candidate (that few have heard of) won about the same percentage among Republicans in Nebraska. In both states, Biden outpaced Trump among his own party's primary voters. FWIW.

On Wednesday, Biden threw down the gauntlet to challenge Trump to two early debates hosted by media outlets --- in a studio, without an audience --- rather than by the non-partisan Committee on Presidential Debates. The Biden-Harris Campaign explained their several reasons for pre-empting the CPD in a letter. They are mostly good ones. Among them, the fact that the group has failed to update its schedule for debates to hold them before tens of millions of Americans have already cast their ballots this year via early and absentee voting.

Trump quickly accepted the challenge, and within hours the pair had agreed to allow CNN host the first debate in Atlanta on June 27, and ABC to host the second on September 10.

THEN, it's on to today's coverage of noteworthy news from the 5th week of the first-ever criminal trial of a former American President. We're joined again today for insight and commentary by HEATHER DIGBY PARTON, award-winning Salon columnist and Hullaballoo blogger, and former attorney and former Republican KEITH BARBER, who now blogs on legal matters as "KeithDB" at the progressive Daily Kos.

Among our many topics of discussion today...

• Parton discusses the embarrassing parade of elected Republican deplorables now showing up at the courthouse in Manhattan --- mostly in red ties and navy suits --- to display their love for the boss, audition to become his Vice Presidential nominee, and/or say the things that the Court has barred Trump from saying via a gag order. Among the "toadies [who] came a-croaking," as Barber quips: Senators JD Vance (OH) and Tommy Tuberville (AL), Rep. Byron Donalds (FL), Gov. Doug Burgham (ND), Vivek Ramaswamy, and, perhaps most shamefully from the former "Rule of Law" party, House Speaker Mike Johnson (LA). "These people are playing to Donald Trump," explains Parton, along with the warning that many of them are "the Michael Cohens the future."

• This week's critical testimony of Michael Cohen --- who Parton describes as a "diminished, humiliated man sitting on the witness stand having to admit, over and over again, that he was a liar, a fool, a dupe, he got sent to jail, all in service to Donald Trump" --- and the "smoking gun" bank statement featuring proof of Cohen's $130,000 hush-money payment to porn storm Stormy Daniels. That document, we have now learned, also features Cohen's own hand-writing and that of former (now jailed for perjury) Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg. Their marginalia details how the falsified reimbursements to Cohen, fraudulently described in the Trump Org's books as "legal retainer" fees, would be made in $35,000 monthly payments by Trump during his first year in the White House. But, as importantly, Cohen testified that Trump personally approved the fraudulent reimbursement scheme during a meeting at Trump Tower with both Cohen and Weisselberg present after Trump's hush-money scheme helped him to win the 2016 election.

• Barber describes what he saw as a surprisingly limp start to cross-examination of Cohen by Trump's lead attorney, Todd Blanche, on Tuesday and how, frankly, Team Trump doesn't seem to have much to work with after the Prosecution spent much of their direct examination "inoculating the jury" to Cohen's many years of lying on behalf of Trump before he came clean and pleaded guilty to many of the crimes Trump is now being held to account for. Trump's attorneys have presented no alternative theory in the case, says Barber. Which also means they are unlikely to offer much, if any, defense case at all after the Prosecution rests. On Tuesday, they informed the judge that Cohen will be their final witness. Team Trump, meanwhile, is still pretending that Trump might actually testify. (He won't.)

Cohen's cross-examination of continues and likely completes on Thursday, and then the court will be off on Friday to allow Trump to go to his son Baron's high-school graduation (if the disgraced former President actually bothers to show up for it.) But it's been a fascinating and critical week of testimony so far, including Cohen's explanation of how he spent years "knee-deep in the cult of Donald Trump".

"Cult of Donald Trump"? What "cult of Donald Trump"?...

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The warnings came from safety experts, insurance companies and environmentalists. Years ago. So, of course, they were all ignored by both the then Republican Governor and big business, including Big Oil, who all got their way over safety concerns and the public interest, as discussed on today's BradCast. [Audio link posted below this summary.]

But first up, some other news of note...

• Ohio's Republican Secretary of State informed Democrats on Friday that they must change the date of their party's national convention this summer or Joe Biden will not qualify to be on the state's 2024 ballot under state law. Or, of course, the state's GOP legislature could simply change the law, as they did in 2020 when the Republican National Convention was scheduled too late for Donald Trump to qualify for that year's ballot. But the state legislature will have to do so by May 9. Mark your calendars.

• On Monday in Wisconsin, President Biden unveiled yet another plan, this a very big one, to relieve hundreds of billions of dollars in student loan debt, this time for 30 million Americans after the corrupted U.S. Supreme Court, last year, blocked his original plan to do so for 40 million borrowers.

• Also on Monday, Donald Trump released a rambling video on his social media cite purporting to be his new position on abortion rights. He takes credit for his SCOTUS majority overturning Roe v. Wade, but says nothing about whether he would sign a national abortion ban; have his FDA block the use of abortion medication; or allow his DoJ to block abortions entirely if he is re-elected this November. So, how did pretty much every single corporate mainstream media outlet headline the "news"? By falsely claiming that "Trump Says Abortion Law Should be Left to the States". But, of course, he didn't. And you wonder how it can be that so many Americans are so misinformed about the threat to the nation and world posed by Donald Trump? There's your answer.

Then, we're joined by investigative journalist HELEN SANTORO of The Lever, who has been digging deep into the Francis Scott Key Bridge disaster ever since its deadly collapse two weeks ago, after being struck by a massive, 980-foot mega-container-ship in the Port of Baltimore.

We discuss two of her recent articles on the tragedy today, both of which underscore how corporate greed and industry lobbyists have been allowed to run roughshod over common sense, public safety, and corporate responsibility.

The first story, filed shortly after the tragedy which killed six bridge workers and has shut down all traffic in or out of one of the East Coast's largest shipping ports ever since, focuses on Maryland's Republican former Governor --- now U.S. Senate Candidate --- Larry Hogan, who ignored multiple, repeated warnings, year after year, in his continuing efforts to bring ever larger vessels into the Port. In doing so, he discounted safety warnings from an insurance giant and an international transit group, while accepting millions in federal funding from the Trump Administration to expand the port and push for still-larger cargo ships. Environmental groups also sounded the alarm about Hogan's efforts, as did a top state engineer as long ago as 1980, when he warned that the Key Bridge could not withstand such a crash, even by smaller vessels, without falling down.

"It seems very clear that [Hogan] really prioritized private interests again and again, wanting Maryland to be this point of business," Santoro explains. "And, it seems like, with prioritizing these private interests, the safety of the bridge was clearly not considered."

The second of Santoro's investigative articles that we discuss today focuses on the 173-year old federal Limitation of Liability Act which caps the amount that shipping companies may be held liable for in such disasters. It earned the nickname "The Titanic Law" back in 1912, when White Star Line, the British-owner of the doomed ship, invoked the Act to pay no more than $430 for each of the more than 1,500 passengers who were lost in that fatal tragedy.

The Act has seen some small reforms over the years, but most attempts in recent years to finally modernize the 1851 law have been stymied by Congressional Republicans at the behest of lobbyists from Big Oil and other industries in the wake of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster and the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling that same year.

"It was pretty crazy going back and seeing that people have been complaining about this law since the Titanic crashed in 1912," Santoro tells me. "And yet the reforms have been, I would argue, pretty minimal, in terms of upping the amount that a company has to pay."

"Big Oil has really latched on to the Limitation of Liability Act to get themselves out of paying a lot of money for the Deepwater Horizon fiasco and other issues," she says. "There's a lot of industry funding and interest that is big on keeping damage control and the amount they're paying out for damages as low as possible."

Will Maryland's popular former Governor Hogan face accountability in his Senate race to fill the seat of retiring Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin this fall for dismissing years of warnings about the very tragedy that has now befallen his state (and the national economy along with it)? Will Congress finally update the antiquated Titanic Law when they return this week, so that major corporations --- which, unlike in the 1850s, are well insured to cover the costs of such disasters --- can be held to real account for the damage they cause in the name of greater and greater profit? Those are just some of the many questions we discuss with Santoro on today's program...

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Today on The BradCast: Our U.S. corporate media are still cowed by the radical Right and still failing in their Constitutional mandate to inform and educate the electorate; a few quick items from the UNconventional Times files in advance of the 2022 midterms; and a much-needed new tune to leave you whistling on the way out. [Audio link to full show is posted below this summary.]

First up, as I've long argued on this program, it's a mistake to buy into the political punditry of Conventional Wisdom that Dems will taking a beating this November. While the climb is still an uphill one for them this year --- particularly in the House --- polling is now bearing out my warning from months ago to ignore Conventional Wisdom in these decidedly UNconventional times. Some brief new exhibits for that case today: Maryland's popular, termed-out Republican Gov. Larry Hogan is describing Dan Cox, the state's Trump-endorsed GOP nominee for Hogan's job, as "not mentally stable", and "a nut" who has "no chance whatsoever" of winning the Governorship.

Further harming GOP odds this year, Trump's ever-worsening legal woes. As CNN reported last night, there are now 18 former top Trump Administration officials --- from two Chiefs of Staff to key military and intel officials --- who tell the news net that the disgraced former President's claim to have had a "standing order" that any documents he left the Oval Office with were immediately declassified is "ludicrous," "ridiculous," "a complete fiction" and worse.

CNN's exclusive reporting, however, never makes clear to readers that, whether or not the highly sensitive national security documents were declassified or not, doesn't actually matter. It was still unlawful for Trump to have stolen them when leaving the White House. That is a fact no matter the classification status of those documents or any other material that he stole upon leaving office last year.

Why are they so afraid to use a 100% accurate description like "stole" when describing what Trump stole from the White House? Or, as we've discussed on many previous shows, simply using plain language to describe Trump's many failed attempts to steal the 2020 Presidential election? (He wasn't trying to "undermine" or "reverse" or "overturn" the results, he was trying to STEAL the election!) Our guest today has some thoughts on all of that and more. He joins us the day after news broke that new management at CNN is cancelling Reliable Sources, the only legitimate media criticism program on cable or broadcast TV news, as hosted by Brian Stelter for 9 years at the end of its 30-year run.

We're delighted to welcome today longtime media critic and former corporate media "insider", DAN FROOMKIN, who served 12 years heading up Washington Post's popular "White House Watch" blog during the George W. Bush era (before he was unceremoniously let go for being too good at it), after which he moved to Huff Post and then The Intercept and is now the editor and creator of the Press Watch newsletter and website.

Our conversation follows on CNN's axing of Reliable Sources, as well as recent headlines from major media outlets that horrifically mislead the public or pull punches in order to "both sides" facts that they clearly see as as politically controversial, no matter how true they happen to be. One example, as cited by NYU media critic Jay Rosen last week, Washington Post's "Garland vowed to depoliticize Justice. Then the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago." And another deconstructed this week by media critic James Fallows on the New York Times' "Even on Biden's Big Day, He's Still in Trump's Long Shadow."

We cover a lot of ground on all of the above and more with Froomkin today. But, a few key quotes...

On Stelter and CNN: "It's a terrible indicator about what CNN is doing and where it's going. ....It's a huge loss for CNN and a huge win for Fox because Stelter was really one of the few in mainstream media who was willing to say that Fox News was all about spreading malicious lies and poisoning the politics of our country. ... I think the reason he was canned was because he was basically the number one target of the rightwing media." Froomkin describes the move as "clearly a sacrifice on the altar of rightwing media," likely at the behest of a major stockholder ("John Malone, the cable company monopolist") of CNN's new owner following the recent merger and reorganization of Warner Bros. and Discovery.

On the lack of Public Editors/Ombudsmen at major corporate outlets like NYT and WaPo: "Public Editors were an incredibly valuable thing...then they were all ditched. The excuse was hysterically funny. The excuse from the New York Times publisher was, 'We don't need a public editor anymore, because we have social media.' That has a certain sense to it, except you look at what they've been doing the last ten years. They've been scrupulously ignoring social media, mocking social media criticism of themselves. They've been incredibly defensive about anything anyone tweets about them. And they've now passed all of these rules telling reporters what they're allowed to tweet and not allowed to tweet, and one of the things they're not allowed to tweet is any criticism of the Times or any other journalists. Same rules at the Washington Post. ... I've always hoped that there would be a sort of critical mass of media critics out there who would cumulatively have the heft of one of these Public Editors, but it's never happened. And, as you pointed out, we're becoming fewer and further between."

On other ongoing corporate media failures in the Age of Trump: "The worst example, by far, is the coverage of the January 6 Committee and what's happened since. The singular achievement of that Committee was that it had established, to the satisfaction of pretty much everybody, except for the willfully ignorant, that prosecuting Trump was not a political necessity --- it was a moral necessity. I think that really helped inoculate [Attorney General Merrick] Garland against the perception that what he would be doing would be political. Instead, the FBI does a search warrant on Mar-a-Lago because of documents that [Trump] stole and didn't give back and then lied about giving back, and the press sees this as some sort of a political fight?!"

As to why the bulk of the mainstream media won't use the word "stole" or "steal" as in the indisputable facts regarding the documents Trump stole from the White House or his many attempts to steal the 2020 election: "Unfortunately, the truth has become so politicized in this day and age that simply asserting the truth is seen as political by these people. And they don't want to do that. ... Five years ago, I think everybody in the country would have agreed that trying to steal the Presidential election was a bad thing and whoever did it ought to be held accountable. But it's a little bit like the frog in the pot --- the media has, day after day, normalized what Trump does."

Much more in my fascinating conversation with Froomkin today.

Finally, as promised, we leave you with a long-overdue and much-needed new Randy Rainbow ditty to end yet another impossible week. Enjoy!...

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There were almost too many clear and present dangers to fit into today's BradCast. But we did our best. Buckle up. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

Among them...

• Trump-endorsed 2020 election denier, Dan Cox, named as winner of Maryland's GOP gubernatorial primary. Democrats rejoice...but should they?

• A bipartisan team of U.S. Senators, lead by Maine Republican Susan Collins and West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin, strike a deal to reform the Electoral Count Act of 1887 to clarify, in theory, that Vice Presidents may not steal elections during joint sessions of Congress to confirm Electoral College votes. We are, let's say, skeptically optimistic.

• Brazil's far-right autocratic President Jair Bolsonaro --- loved by Trump and Tucker Carlson of Fox 'News' alike --- goes full Trump in declaring that his re-election contest in about 75 days, in which he is predicted to lose by a landslide, will be marred by massive fraud requiring military intervention to sort out.

• It's not looking good for Steve Bannon in his Contempt of Congress trial. It is looking much better, however, for those who believe in accountability and the rule of law.

• It's also not looking good for a whole passel of conspirators who attempted to help Trump steal the 2020 Presidential election in Georgia, including Rudy Giuliani, Sen. Lindsey Graham, whose attempts to quash their subpoenas have failed so far, and 16 GOP fake electors now designated by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis as "targets" in the special grand jury probe.

• GOPers in the House and Senate are squirming today, as House Democrats play some excellent hard ball (for a change) by calling votes on the Respect for Marriage Act, to give federal statutory protection to both same-sex and interracial marriage, and the Right to Contraception Act. Republicans are outraged --- OUTRAGED! --- that they're being forced to take a public stance on these issues during an election year, after SCOTUS recently made clear those previously Constitutionally-established rights may now be on their chopping block as well, following their corrupt overturning of Roe v. Wade.

• Following the corrupt SCOTUS majority gutting the ability of the EPA to regulate carbon, and the corrupt Joe Manchin gutting Joe Biden and the Democrats' critical climate change agenda, the President announced plans for Executive Actions to take on the crisis which he describes (correctly) as a "clear and present danger"...

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For more than two months, the FBI has been rounding up and charging hundreds of Trump-incited insurrectionists who, in hopes of preventing the Congressional certification of Joe Biden's Electoral College victory last November, stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6th.

But a number of key questions remain wholly unanswered following the unprecedented attack on our very system of representative democracy. Central to several of those questions is Donald Trump's own, personal, behind-the-scenes machinations to help instigate the uprising and, perhaps, prevent the deployment of the military to help quell the rebellion he encouraged.

The March 3rd Senate committee testimony of Major General William Walker, Commander of the D.C. National Guard, describing a seemingly inexplicable delay in authorization for his troops to provide relief to the U.S. Capitol under siege, underscores the need to determine whether there is a connection between Trump's post-election November 2020 purge of the top civilian leadership at the Department of Defense (DoD) and the January 6th assault.

The purge at the Pentagon began two days after media outlets called the Presidential Election for Joe Biden, when Trump fired Secretary of Defense Mark Esper. Within days, four senior DoD officials either resigned or were fired and replaced by what CNN characterized as "conspiracy theorists and Trump loyalists." Christopher Miller became the Acting Secretary of Defense. Kash Patel, who had previously worked for the disgraced Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) on the House Intelligence Committee, was appointed to serve as Miller's Chief-of-Staff.

While one Pentagon official described the November purge as "scary", "unsettling" and the moves one would expect from a "dictator", CNN noted in its contemporaneous account that "no one at the Pentagon has an understanding as to what the grand plan is."

Walker's testimony before the Senate Rules and Homeland Security Committees earlier this month, together with other publicly known evidence, points to a distinct likelihood that, once it became clear he couldn't rely upon the U.S. military to carry out a coup, Trump's "grand plan" entailed a stand-down of the D.C. National Guard while his "personal army", an incited mob of white supremacists, stormed the Capitol on January 6...

On January 3rd --- three days before Trump's violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol --- John McCain's 2008 campaign chair Steve Schmidt argued "The die is cast for the Republican Party. It will be destroyed on January 6th." His brief but prophetic Twitter thread went on to argue that his former Party would not be able to survive its factionalism and "the poisonous fruit from four years of collaboration and complicity with Trump's insanity, illiberalism and incompetence are ready for harvest." He ended the thread charging: "There are only two sides in American politics now. There is the American side and the Autocratic side. May God help us all if we falter, flag or fail in defense of American democracy." Schmidt's prediction, as we discuss on today's BradCast, appears spot on. [Audio link to today's show is posted below the summary.]

Among the stories, many of which appear to buttress Schmidt's case, covered on today's program....

• The Pentagon's Joint Chiefs of Staff issued an unprecedented statement to the military (and the nation), condemning the "violence, sedition and insurrection" at the U.S. Capitol last week, reminding them of their duty to defend the Constitutional process, and made clear that "President-elect Biden will be inaugurated and will become our 46th Commander in Chief" next week.

• In the wake of that deadly, Trump-incited coup attempt, many major corporations have announced they will be withholding millions in campaign funding to Republicans who voted against affirming Joe Biden's Electoral College victory last week. Some will also be withholding funding from Democrats...for apparently no sensible reason at all. (Not that we're against it.)

• If the news of losing their funding from major corporations wasn't bad enough for Republicans, their biggest funder, billionaire Sheldon Adelson, died on Tuesday. We suspect GOPers will keep kissing up to his widow, however, in hopes of continuing to rake in Adelson's corporate campaign cash.

• How upside-down has the nation become in the Trump Era? We have to laud Liz Cheney (Liz Cheney!) today for coming out in favor of the Article of Impeachment [PDF] Democrats are now moving through the House, charging Donald Trump with "Incitement of Insurrection". Even soon-to-be-former Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, reportedly, is not opposing it and is even said to be "pleased" about it.

• House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is not nearly as clever as McConnell, as several stories we cover today make all too clear. Among them, on Monday, following a conversation with the President, McCarthy told his House GOP Conference, according to Fox "News", that Trump acknowledged he bears some blame for what happened last Wednesday, when his supporters attacked the Capitol following his remarks to them, falsely claiming that the election was stolen and they must "fight" to save the nation. McCarthy's thanks for passing on that message from Trump? Today in Texas, Trump said he takes no responsibility at all for the riot. "People thought that what I said was totally appropriate," Trump told media, "Everybody to the ‘t’ thought it was totally appropriate.”

• Among those who didn't find it "totally appropriate," New Jersey's former Republican Governor and longtime Trump buddy Chris Christie, who said "if incitement to insurrection" isn't grounds for impeachment, "I don't know what is." Maryland's current Republican Governor Larry Hogan echoed the sentiment, agreeing that Trump has "blood on his hands" for the riot that resulted in the deaths of at least five people, including a police officer last week. "He was responsible for inciting this riotous mob. This was an insurrection. They stormed the Capitol and threatened to kill the Vice President and put the lives of people in danger and he had a huge role to play in that," said Hogan, a likely 2024 Presidential hopeful.

• But it may have been California's former Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger whose remarks --- as someone who grew up in Austria in the shadow of WWII --- were the most profound and even, somehow, encouraging. We share his full, emotional, must listen statement posted online over the weekend, comparing the Nazi's Kristallnacht to last week's violent, failed coup.

• Finally, news breaks that Michigan's former Republican Governor Rick Snyder and other former state officials are about to be criminally charged for their parts in the Flint lead water poisoning disaster, which leads us to Desi Doyen and our latest Green News Report, with bad news for the planet as usual, but a bit of welcome schadenfreude concerning the fossil fuel industry and the fates of those toxic political appointees who worked in the Trump Administration...

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We've got good news and bad --- and a whole lot of facts to go with it --- on today's BradCast. And we even have some time to open the phones to listener calls today!. [Audio link to full show is at bottom of summary.]

Among the stories covered on today's program...

• Backlash is growing against COVID-19 financial relief measures adopted by Congress, signed by the President, and failing to help the Americans that they were supposedly designed to be help;

• But, in what appeared (at least as of early this morning) to be much better news, Donald Trump had been planning to stop endangering public health with his appearances at White House coronavirus task force briefings. He did not appear at any briefings over the weekend and, as of Monday morning, on the heels of continuing blowback in response to his musings at last Thursday's briefing in which he discussed injecting people with disinfectant to "cure" coronavirus, his Press Secretary confirmed he would be reducing his role in those nightly briefings which, long ago, turned into Trump Campaign TV shows. A few hours later, however, the White House backtracked. Sure enough, by Monday evening, Trump was back at the podium. But we're still ignoring him. You're welcome.;

• We can't, however, ignore everything he says, particularly when he continues to put out dangerous misinformation from that podium. Thankfully, we have more trustworthy news sources like....Saturday Night Live to correct him! Brad Pitt played Dr. Anthony Fauci on the show over the weekend, and we share it today because a) it was very funny and b) it helps correct a whole bunch of deadly BS that Trump has been misinforming the American public with. (So much so that even Republicans have been forced to come out and correct the President's dangerous misinformation on poisoning people to try and kill the coronavirus, after calls to emergency poison control hotlines spiked around the country following Trump's remarks.);

• Shifting to elections news --- the only way we'll ultimately be able to turn the page from many of our ongoing nightmares --- some very good news out of North Dakota today. A settlement has been reached, according to the Campaign Legal Center, with two Native American tribes who sued the state over the GOP effort to prevent them from voting with a law that mandates a Photo ID voting restriction requiring IDs with residential street addresses. That, even though thousands of tribal members living on reservations in the state do not have residential addresses. The settlement, agreed to by the state in hopes of avoiding a trial, will (theoretically) ensure that all Native Americans voters will be able to do so without a problem in ND's upcoming June 9th primary and beyond. That good news also allowed us to report another related good news story from the 2018 election that we've being trying to cover for the past year and a half! It has to do with the three Republican members of the ND state legislature, incuding the House Majority Leader, whose seats were flipped from "red" to "blue" in the 2018 mid-terms in response to the GOP-majority's purposely-disenfranchising Photo ID measure. The best part: The guy who sponsored the 2013 law which took effect in 2018 for the first time, was ousted in the same election by Democrat Ruth Buffalo --- a Native American!;

• With that good election news out of the way, we move on to New York for some much-less-than-good election news. On Monday, the Democrats on the State Board of Elections voted to cancel the June 23 Democratic Presidential Primary, even though Bernie Sanders, who has suspended his campaign and endorsed Joe Biden, has said he wishes to remain on the ballots for the 20 or so remaining primaries. Over the weekend, his campaign asked the NY Dems to NOT cancel the primary. While most NY voters, due to the coronavirus, will be allowed to vote via absentee ballot in the June 23 election (where there will still be other primaries and issues on the ballot), Democratic state officials said that removing the Presidential race from the ballot would lower turnout in hopes of making in-person voting safer.

  The Sanders Campaign is furious and calls the move a "blow to American democracy". Democratic NY Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is also angry and called for the DNC --- which claims they did not call for the cancellation --- to override or reverse the decision, in some fashion. She notes that "Sen. Sanders explicitly stated that he intended on continuing to collect delegates in order to advance wage, healthcare, climate & other priorities into the platform at the convention," adding "unity isn't a feeling, it's a process. Undemocratic, unilateral decisions that disenfranchise millions of progressive voters & volunteers is extremely destructive to the process of unifying the party for Nov."

  The Sanders Campaign has now petitioned the NY State Board of Elections to keep his name on the ballot, with his attorney noting that the Vermont Senator "is concerned that his removal from the ballot would undermine efforts to unify the Democratic Party in advance of the general election." The vote today --- which neither Biden, nor the state Party, nor Gov. Andrew Cuomo asked for --- comes despite the reasonable argument detailed last week at The BRAD BLOG by Ernie Canning, who explained why he believes the more votes Sanders receives in the remaining primaries, the more likely that presumptive nominee Biden will actually win this November!;

• Also, speaking of elections, voting in Ohio's postponed-at-the-last-minute March 17th election will finally end as of tomorrow (April 28). Absentee ballots postmarked by Monday night will be counted if they arrive at County headquarters by May 8 or if voters deliver them to County Boards of Election by Tuesday night at 7:30pm. In-person voting will be available on Tuesday for disabled or homeless voters, though the state's Secretary of State has said that any voter who claims disability or that they are unable to receive mail will not be challenged and will be allowed to vote in person at County Boards of Elections on April 28;

• Finally, we take some calls on any number of things discussed on today's show and even much that we didn't!...

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On today's BradCast: Avery important lesson from the coronavirus crisis for progressives and for all Americans that I hope we are all able to remember once this crisis has finally ended. [Audio link to full show is posted at end of article. Please click it!]

Britain's 71-year old Prince Charles, 71-year old Rock-and-Roll Hall of Famer Jackson Browne and 81-year old playwright Terrence McNally all tested positive. The prolific playwright succumbed on Tuesday in Florida. They were all able to get tested for coronavirus. Tens, if not hundreds of thousands of Americans still cannot. Add it to the list of national disgraces we are collectively enduring as we stay-at-home as much as possible in hopes of slowing the spread to keep our medical system from becoming overwhelmed.

That said, Senate Democratic and Republican leaders have come to an agreement on another emergency spending bill to address a bit more of the growing fallout from the global coronavirus pandemic. The bill, if allowed to pass in the Senate by four Republicans now blocking it, and if House Democrats can pass a similarly acceptable bill, will cost a record $2 trillion. That's half the size of the nation's annual $4 trillion annual federal budget, and many experts agree, there will need to be much more spending hereafter.

And yet, nobody --- not Republicans or Democrats in the Senate, House of Representatives or White House --- seems to be complaining that we don't have the money to pay for it, or that we must cut somewhere else or raise taxes to be able to afford it. It is as if, as our guest today, Stony Brook University Professor of Economics and leading authority on Modern Monetary Theory STEPHANIE KELTON notes, we are able to just "conjure into existence, in a matter of days, a couple of trillion dollars," enough money for the largest spending bill in the history of the country. And, as it turns out, she is right!

As Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) noted recently in response to the sudden disappearance of so-called "Deficit Hawks" on Capitol Hill: "It's actually a fascinating progressive moment, because what it's shown is that all of these issues have never been about 'how are you going to pay for it?' It's never been about whether we have the capacity to do these things. All of these excuses that we have been given as to why we can't treat people humanely have suddenly gone up in smoke. And what has been revealed is that all of these issues were really about a lack of political will and who you deemed worthy to be in an emergency or not."

Kelton, the former Chief Economist for the U.S. Senate Budget Committee, has been trying to make these points of late in Twitter threads, New York Times op-eds, and her upcoming book The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People's Economy. As she tells me today, "Congress will always find the funds to accomplish the things that it considers a priority. If that's tax cuts, then that's the priority, and the money will be there. If it's wars, that's the priority. If it's dealing with a global pandemic, then that suddenly becomes a priority."

She laments that Democrats, over months on the Presidential campaign trail, have not been able to educate the American public about these facts and how difficult it has now become --- after years of phony claims from politicians (of both parties) that the U.S. was going broke or that government should be run by the same fiscal rules that govern households and businesses --- "to disabuse people of these myths that we have heard from our politicians, pundits and reporters."

She argues "There is a time and a place for offsets. It's not a free lunch", but Bernie Sanders' call for "canceling $81 billion of medical debt is nothing. It's everything to the people who have medical debt. But from the perspective of the federal budget, it's practically a rounding error, it's so trivial. We could have done that and not offset it," she says. "The federal government's finances don't work like ours. They're not subject to the same constraints as a household or a private company. Once you get your head around that, a lot of other things follow."

"A year ago, could we have just done free college or Medicare For All or whatever? The answer is yes. Congress can write and pass any bill it chooses, period. The risk, though, is that if you don't include offsets, and you're simply authorizing these huge spending bills left and right, at some point you're going to eat up all of the fiscal space left in the economy. In other words, it's going to become inflationary. So there is a time and a place for offsets." That time, apparently, is not now, however. And she hopes that after this emergency finally passes, enough Americans will remember what happened here, how easy it was to "find" all the money when it was needed, to finally do away with the notion that endless wars and corporate subsidies and tax cuts for the wealthy are the only things we can afford to spend money on to "promote the general welfare" of the American people.

We discuss all of that and much more today, including details on what the proposed Phase III emergency coronavirus spending bill will and won't pay for, and the good news that America's Governors --- both Democratic and Republican --- seem to be rejecting our corrupt, man-child President when it comes to his dangerous coronavirus idiocy.

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Accountability and respect for the rule of law and Constitution are at the center of just about every story we cover on today's BradCast --- (and on most days...but especially today) --- particularly with an absolutely lawless Administration and criminal President becoming seemingly more lawless and criminal by the day. [Audio link to show is posted below summary.]

Among the related stories on today's program....

• The House Oversight Committee moved on Tuesday to vote on contempt charges against Carl Kline, former White House Personnel Security Director, who refused to show up to testify at the Committee on Tuesday despite being issued a lawful subpoena by Congress ordering him to do so. His attorney said he didn't show on the advice of the White House who directed him not to. Kline, on apparent orders from the President, had approved "top secret" security clearances for dozens of White House officials, including Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, after career security officials rejected those applications for numerous reasons, according to 18-year White House personnel office veteran Tricia Newbold, who revealed the cases during whistleblower testimony to the House panel last month;

• Maryland's two-term Republican Governor Larry Hogan said in New Hampshire this morning that he is considering a primary run against Trump, after describing the revelations of the redacted Mueller Report as "very disturbing" and criticizing his own party for being "afraid" of challenging the President. If he jumps in, Hogan would be the second GOP Governor to try and win the nomination over Trump in 2020, along with Massachusetts' William Weld who has already declared;

• In news of still other Republicans willing to courageously stand up to a scofflaw President from their own party, J.W. Verret, a former Trump transition team official and professor of law at George Mason University, unleashed an op-ed today making the case for impeachment in the wake of Trump's "criminal conduct," citing "roughly a dozen separate instance of obstruction of justice" revealed by the Mueller Report as his "tipping point";

• But while a handful of Republicans may be willing to take on the President, Democrats in Congress, for their part, are still timidly moving ahead with extraordinary caution. On a conference call with and a letter to the Democratic House caucus on Monday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi reportedly vowed that the House would continue Congressional investigations to "uncover the truth" about Trump's "highly unethical and unscrupulous behavior in his alleged attempts to obstruct justice," while attempting to keep a lid on the growing calls for impeachment from her caucus. She did not rule out impeachment, but said "we aren't going to go faster, we are going to go as fast as the facts take us";

• On Monday night, however, in what many have somewhat mischaracterized as Presidential hopeful Sen. Kamala Harris "calling for impeachment," the California Democrat, during a CNN town hall, did call for Congress to "take steps toward impeachment." We contrast Harris' exceedingly cautious approach to the clarion calls for equal justice under the law and impeachment proceedings as a Constitutional duty issued by Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren in recent days. She has been calling for same, in no uncertain terms, on the Presidential campaign trail since the release of Mueller's redacted report late last week, and said on Monday night on CNN, in response to charges that impeachment would distract from the 2020 campaign: "There is no political inconvenience exception to the United States Constitution."

  A number of other Democratic hopefuls have been far more cautious and/or circumspect than either of those two, including Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders who says he worries a focus on impeachment could backfire on Dems and South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg who concedes Trump "deserves impeachment", but that it's up to Congress, not him, to take action in that regard;

• With the noteworthy exception of Warren, many Dems (and media geniuses) have cited the fact that Republicans in the Senate are unlikely to vote to convict the President, as a reason to shy away from impeachment proceedings entirely. (A simple majority is needed to approve articles of impeachment in the Democratic-controlled House, but a two-thirds vote is needed for conviction and removal of the President in the GOP-majority Senate). Playing slave to that conventional wisdom, however, largely allows Republicans a veto on which Presidents may or may not be impeached.

  Moreover, the convention wisdom should be challenged here, particularly given the statements that many of the currently seated Republican Senators have offered, on the record, in support of impeachment and removal from office for a President who has attempted to obstruct justice by witness tampering and lying to the American public. Trump was documented as having done so as many as ten different times, as per Mueller's Report.

  Of course, the Senators who we quote directly today on the need to remove a President for those very same crimes were speaking against President Bill Clinton during his impeachment proceedings back in 1998. But their arguments against Clinton apply directly to Trump. So, will those very same Senators --- there are 11 who voted in '98 and would be required to vote here --- hypocritically vote against conviction this time around, under arguably far more criminal circumstances, when confronted with their own words on the topic? Maybe, maybe not. We won't know, of course, unless Dems do the right and Constitutional thing by voting in favor of the rule of law and moving to impeach this lawless President. Even the clear demonstration of blatant GOP hypocrisy would be helpful to expose to the American people before the 2020 election, and perhaps serve to make specious impeachments against Democrats in the future more unlikely;

• Finally, Rep. Elijah Cummings, Chair of the House Oversight Committee, said after the release of the redacted Mueller Report that he is "begging the American People to pay attention" and contact their members of Congress about this in order to save democracy for future generations. "At the rate we're going," he warns, "it won't be there." We are urging the same. You can reach your member of Congress at 202-224-3121...

Enjoy the program...

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On today's BradCast: With Republicans in the U.S. Senate on the verge of completing their brazen and historically unprecedented theft of the U.S. Supreme Court majority for a generation --- and still grimmer news elsewhere around the world --- we're happy to cover an inspiring David v. Goliath story about a media activist who took on a major media conglomerate (and the FCC) and seems to have won! At least mostly. [Audio link to show follows below.]

Former award-winning broadcast journalist turned media reformer Sue Wilson of Media Action Center joins us today to detail an encouraging ending to what began ten years ago as an unspeakably tragic story. After the death of a listener, following a stunt contest on Entercom Communication's KDND 107.9 "The End" in Sacramento, and a trial finding the company liable for that death, Wilson decided to file a Petition to Deny renewal of the company's license with the FCC for its 50,000 watt powerhouse frequency.

The FCC has not revoked any corporate license to use our public airwaves in the federal agency's memory. What happened next, however, was detailed over the weekend by Dan Morain at the Sacramento Bee, by Wilson herself today at The BRAD BLOG, and, in person on today's BradCast, where she details the difficulties she had in finding any of the larger, more established media reform organizations or attorneys willing to join her effort.

This story is a remarkably encouraging (and timely) reminder that, yes, one person actually can make a difference by taking on both corporate giants and intransigent federal agencies --- and win! But, as importantly, it's also an important reminder that those for-profit corporations entrusted with controlling our public airwaves, still have a legal responsibility to use those airwaves in the public interest.

Also today: Breaking down the GOP lie at the center of their SCOTUS theft (and what you can still try and do about it); Steve Bannon dumped from the National Security Council; The first city council in the nation (that we know of) adopts a resolution calling for the impeachment of Donald Trump; a Republican Governor bans fracking in his state; some U.S. House special election news; and Desi Doyen joins us with the latest Green News Report...

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Follow @GreenNewsReport...

(Or use "Click here to listen..." link below.)

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Elections have consequences: Trump executive order to begin ripping up Obama's climate legacy; Not so fast - Trump approves Keystone XL Pipeline, but Nebraska gets final say; North Dakota pipeline spill three times larger than original estimate; PLUS: Maryland state legislature and Republican Governor approve permanent ban on fracking... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Climate Deniers Are Winning—and Getting Greedy; Climate Change-Fueled Jet Stream Linked to Floods and Heatwave; A Merciless Bat-Killing Fungus Is Now In Texas; Michigan, Flint To Replace 18,000 Lead-Tainted Water Lines; EPA Didn't Tighten Standards For Lead, Leaving Communities Adrift; California vs. Trump: California regulators move forward on climate change rules; California passes nation’s toughest methane emission regulations; Perry Pushes Nevada Nuclear Waste Site In First Official Visit... PLUS: USDA Drops Plan To Test For Monsanto Weed Killer In Food... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast, 200k former felons get their voting rights back in Virginia, even as one protester for campaign finance reform loses his right to vote after being sentenced for a federal felony.

In a surprise announcement today, citing long-standing post-Civil War restrictions meant to keep African-American voters away from the ballot box, VA's Governor Terry McAuliffe (D) issued an executive order to re-enfranchise more than 200,000 former felons who have completed their prison sentences as well as their parole and probation periods. That good news comes even as former felons in Maryland are voting for the first time in decades, in advance of next week's primary, following that state legislative override of a veto by Gov. Larry Hogan (R).

Meanwhile, Brooklyn's top Board of Elections official is suspended amidst the NY Attorney General's new investigation into the still-unexplained purge of more than 100,000 Democratic voters in the months leading up to last Tuesday's disastrous Presidential Primary in NY.

Then, we are joined again by Florida postal worker Doug Hughes, who was sentenced on Thursday to four months in federal prison as part of a plea deal following his infamous demonstration for campaign finance reform last year when he landed his homemade gyrocopter on the lawn of the U.S. Capitol to raise awareness for the problem of money in politics following disastrous U.S. Supreme Court decisions like Citizens United and other related cases.

Hughes tells me, as he told the U.S. District Court Judge in federal court yesterday, that he has "no regrets" for his protest, despite the high costs he is being forced to pay, including, ironically enough, the loss of his voting rights in the state of Florida.

"I will never do this again, but I have no regrets over having done it," he says. "Judge Kotelly said my flight was a stunt. And it was a stunt, because it didn't change anything as far as the laws were concerned. It didn't do anything. Except it changed the perception that resistance is futile. People now believe that they can change [the campaign finance system], and a lot of people are getting engaged in changing it."

Hughes shares his thoughts on the 'Democracy Spring' protests for election and campaign finance reform that have resulted in more than 1,000 arrests over the past two weeks at the nation's capitol, even as the mainstream corporate media barely covered any of it. He describes his remarkable conversation with a CNN producer who called him yesterday after his sentencing. He says he told the CNN staffer that Democracy Spring protesters "were chanting 'Where is CNN?' You get thousands of people together and not a single CNN camera! There was no coverage of what was going on. I said, 'What kind of ghouls are running the organization that you've got to have to have somebody dead before the media will cover it?'"

The colorful and impassioned Hughes also comments on the absurdity of big banks and other major corporations getting away with tax-deductible financial settlements for actual crimes (including murder), while their executives get off scot-free. But, he argues, there is a way to change what seems like an unbeatable system, and he says it involves taking on both Democrats and Republicans alike in primary elections if they refuse to join forces to move campaign finance reform forward. "Like 4% of the population of any district is more than enough to beat the incumbent in the primary."

There is much more to hear from my discussion with Hughes (his website is here if you'd like to help him), before I am finally joined by Desi Doyen with our latest Green News Report. This one, on Earth Day --- and a very significant one at that...

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